The Roads Less Travelled …

Me got a new toy … yesss, you guessed it, a brand new laptop (A dell Inspiron 5160) … A big thank you to PI, my new workplace after one and half years in Talisma (some of my friends even think that I shifted jobs to get a laptop).

Anyway a new comp meant that I had to re-aggregate my entire music collection, which though a painful task led to my re-prioritizing my collection. The stuff that I rarely listen to remained in the CDs while the good old bands like Metallica and Maiden got back their rightful place. Also re-surfed the net looking for some quality discussion and new stuff on metal. Found this excellent debate. I agree with the debate on the principle that metal should always have that outpouring of energy in a slightly rebellious or seditious fashion. It is this energy which defines this genre of music. Also Metal is by far the most overtly individualistic of all musical genres. Individuality here is revered and the lack of it is enough to tag artists as “also rans”. It is this aspect of metal which probably explains why metalheads are amongst the most colorful and controversial artists.

Couple of days back, Google did it again… Google Suggest, its new offering threw open a whole world of possibilities. The idea is simple, Google added intellisense to its search engine. The webpage now show you what might have intended to type, virtually rendering an older innovation of Google, the "Did you mean this?" page useless.

The intellisense surprised many because of its speed. The service on the best of local machines takes some smart indexing techniques to pull off. Take Visual Studio for instance; it still cannot say its intellisense is good. That Google managed to pull off it in the web scenario is an achievement.

Google Suggest has been dissected and analyzed here …

The draw for 'Round of 16' for the CL was made in Nyon …. (matches on Feb 22/23 and Mar 8/9) … And boy what a set of matches is this going to be … Some of the confrontations are worthy of finals in any competition ….

you have ….

Key matchups being the 1st, 3rd , 7th and 8th … I can safely say that in all probability one of 8 teams from these is going to win the CL this year … But what a pity only 4 of them will be in the quarters ….

Some key observations ….

1. Liverpool have a good chance of being the only English team in the quarters. Chelsea, Arsenal and ManU have all been drawn against continental opponents capable of beating them at their best. I wonder what Sir Alex is thinking now …. Maybe a matchup against Werder now looks a much better proposition since he now has to face AC Milan .

2. Real Madrid might go out … They meet their nemesis of 2 years before Juventus again …. But the 'The Old Lady of Turin' is now in imperious form compared to the doldrums of the 'Les Merengues' …

3. Mourinho gets his wish as does Jaap Stam … Chelsea play Barca in a matchup between the best 2 clubs on this planet right now … AC Milan and ManU also play … I do not know whom to support … Guess I shall go for AC.

4. Bayern Munich vs Arsenal throws up another interesting fixture … Both teams are far from their imperious selves this season … Arsenal has a reputation for underperforming in Europe and Bayern have flattered to deceive in the last few years …

All I can say now is, "May the best team win … "

Latin American writing is obsessed with history. The always interesting and often bloody past of these countries gives their literature an unique gritty edge that lends any story a corner in the bigger picture of things.

A reading of Mario Vargas Llosa's "The Feast of the Goat", is an affirmation of the above. With the difference that while Marquez and others wrap history in metaphor and give it a sense of fantasy, Llosa chooses to be painfully direct. The recounting of the last days the General Rafael Trujillo, the dictator of the Dominican Republic is done in three separate narratives. Urania Cabral's narrative is intimately personal and recounts the events which lead to her leaving her birthplace for thirty odd years. Trujillo's to be assassins form another thread with their tales of how they all were scarred by Trujillo or his cronies and then came along to be together at that momentous period in the nation's history. And last of them is Trujillo, an almost comic figure, who maps his own virility to that of the nation and his cabal of people with nicknames like Egghead, Constitutional Sot and Walking Turd.

Even though I am not knowledgeable about the politics and history of the Dominican Republic, the book seems to have recreated the environment of the Trujillista era in all its glory and ignominy in a stupendous fashion. If not for anything else I would recommend the book for its superb rendering of history on paper. The pace of the narrative is gripping with every bloody chapter giving away some sense of what it really means to not have your self-will. Statements like "The worst thing for a Dominican is to intelligent or competent", give away the sense of despondency surrounding the nation.

The structure of the novel is however staggered. The story of Urania Cabral suffers at times from a lack of attention and meanders into blind alleys. However, the other two narratives more make than make up for the slight defect and the make this novels the best I have read in some time.